The dangers of the "rewards system"

How many of you folks out there in ADD land have ever tried this trick: you know you have to get X done today, you don't want to do it/know you will procrastinate on it, so you decide that you will give yourself a reward of some kind when you do.

This is a common coping strategy for ADD, and one that I see a lot of people try to employ, including myself. However, I don't know of anyone with ADD who's ever had good luck with it. If you think about it for a minute, it's easy to see why: if our neurology makes us naturally bad at delaying gratification, why would we think that another form of delayed gratification is going to somehow make us be more effective?

I think those of us who try this tactic do so because we've had some well-meaning parent, relative or teacher try to push it on us at some point in our youth. File that under "things that work for normal people," because most neurology-typical people ARE motivated by delayed gratification, so adding to the gratification adds to to the motivation.

Alas, not so for those of us with ADD. However great the gratification in the future, the future is essentially nonexistent for all that our brains can emotionally conceive of it as a reality. We are like the children in the classic experiment who can't wait five minutes to eat the marshmallow, even knowing that we will get a second if we wait it out.

The Now is real for us. The Not Now is something we can only understand as a concept because the mechanism in our brain that should make it feel real is underactive.

So...stop trying to reward yourself later. A far better solution, when you can do it, is to find a way to reward yourself during. How about a piece of chocolate to eat while you work on that boring report? Creature comforts have become a major source of strength for me when it comes to coping with my ADD. Favorite movies on my laptop while I wash the dishes, favorite music playing while I do my writing, snacks while I attend to my neglected e-mail...even something as simple as wearing a favorite shirt or sitting in a favorite chair while performing an unwanted task can have a surprisingly positive effect on my ability to motivate myself to get things done. The same simple, childlike parts of my brain that can't be motivated by something big later can be motivated by something small now.

And always remember...if it doesn't help you, don't bother with it.